A fitter master, it was thought, was obtained in Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, who came to Bonn in the summer of 1779, as tenor singer in Grossmann and Helmuth’s theatrical company. Mäurer, the violoncellist, in some reminiscences of that period communicated to this work by Professor Jahn, says that Pfeiffer was a skillful pianist and gave the boy lessons, but not at any regular hours. Often when he came with Beethoven, the father, from the wine-house late at night, the boy was roused from sleep and kept at the pianoforte until morning;--a course not particularly favorable to his progress at school, but one which may be readily credited in the light of what is known of Pfeiffer and Johann Beethoven, and one, moreover, which would cause the lessons to make an enduring impression upon the memory. There is some reason to think that the former was an inmate of the latter’s family, which adds probability to the story. Although Pfeiffer was in Bonn but one year, Wegeler affirms that “Beethoven owed most of all to this teacher, and was so appreciative of the fact that he sent him financial help from Vienna through Simrock.” To what extent Wegeler’s opinion as to Beethoven’s obligations is correct, it would be difficult to decide; but the utter improbability that a single year’s lessons from this man would profit a boy eight and a half to nine and a half years old, more than those from any other of his teachers, much longer and systematically continued, is manifest. About this time the young court musician Franz Georg Rovantini lived in the same house with Beethoven. He was the son of a violinist Johann Conrad Rovantini who had been called to Bonn from Ehrenbreitstein and who died in 1766. He was related to the Beethoven family. The young musician was much respected and sought after as teacher. According to the Fischer document the boy Beethoven was among his pupils, taking lessons on the violin and viola. But these lessons, too, came to an early end; Rovantini died on September 9, 1781, aged 24.